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XXXVI.

1836.

tional one for agitating to get quit of the whole re- СНАР. mainder. "I will take my instalment," said he in a letter to the electors of Kilkenny, "however small at any time, and will then go on for the balance. I realise for Ireland all I can get, and having got part, I am then better able to seek the rest. I heartily supported the Ministry of Lord Melbourne in their measures of tithe relief, not as giving all I wanted for the people of Ireland, but as giving a part, and establishing an appropriation principle which would necessarily produce much more." In pursuance of these principles, the anti-tithe agitation was everywhere renewed, and produced the most lamentable results. Payment of tithe, though only a fraction of a farthing, was everywhere resisted, by the injunctions of the priests, as a matter of conscience. The process-server was everywhere hunted and persecuted like a wild beast. If a sale of distrained

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cattle was attempted, intimidating mobs, surrounding the scene, prevented any one from purchasing. Some relief was for a time experienced by the clergy by the use of exchequer writs for the recovery of tithe instead of common process, but the respite proved evanescent. The exchequer writs, it was soon found, could be enforced only by the police or military; frequent collisions between them and the peasantry took place, attended by bloodshed on both sides. At Dunkennin in Tipperary two men were slain in October in attempting to post subpœnas in obedience to an exchequer writ; and while the country was agitated by these frightful scenes of disorder and violence, Mr Sheil gave the sanction of his name and abilities to the continuance of the system, and an ex- 1836, 299chequer collector had to be appointed before a trifling ii. 308, 309. tithe due from his estate could be collected.1

To carry into full and renewed operation this antitithe agitation, the old machinery devised by O'Connell, which had proved so effective in bringing about Catholic

1 Ann. Reg.

305; Mart.

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1836. 44.

CHAP, emancipation, was again fully organised and everywhere established. Under his direction and that of Mr Sheil, the old association, under the new name of the "General Re-estab- Association," was re-established in Dublin, and branches the Catho- set on foot in every town and parish in Ireland. The lic Associa-General Association" held its meetings weekly, or

lishment of

tion.

oftener, in Dublin, at which reports were regularly read from the affiliated associations, or "registry clubs," in the provinces, and the amount of the "rent," or weekly contributions got from them, proclaimed and published. The topics which formed the staple of the speeches at these meetings, were the greatness, strength, and determination of Ireland; the seven centuries of English oppression; the necessity of thorough organisation, united action, and incessant agitation; and the magnitude of the results which might be expected from their continued action. The "registry" was especially urged upon their attention, and the necessity of straining every nerve to get Catholic electors on the roll, and keep Protestants off. Corporate reform-in other words, the command of all the boroughs in the kingdom—entire liberation from tithes and churchrates, were the advantages promised in the first instance from these measures; the repeal of the Union and abolition of the Protestant Establishment, the boon to be ultimately extorted from the Government. In this unparalleled and universally organised conspiracy, the leaders were the very men who had recently so furiously denounced the defensive Orange associations in the north of Ireland; and the Government, which remained a passive spectator of it, was the same which had, by means 1 Ann. Reg. of a mere wish expressed from the Crown to one of the houses of Parliament, scattered all these Orange societies to the winds.1

1836, 301303.

But there never was a truer observation, than that all human evils have a limit; and that when the effects of existing institutions become excessively injurious, an

XXXVI.

1836.

45.

commend

that Report rewhich ing a Poor The Law in Ire

the

land.

under-current sets in, destined in the end to correct them. CHAP. This limit had now been reached in Ireland; this undercurrent was beginning to set in. The tide had turned, and though disasters unparalleled yet awaited her, worst of all social evils, blindness to the source from they proceeded, was beginning to be removed. wretched condition of the Irish peasantry, under combined effect of a redundant population, woeful cultivation, an absentee gentry, political agitation, low prices, and no means of emigration, had now reached such a height, that a few men of sense in the country began to see that their evils were social, not political, and that instead of being likely to be diminished by the vehement strife of parties, of which they had long been the victims, they were enhanced by it in the highest degree. Add to this that the inundations of Irish labourers into England and Scotland, in consequence of the miserably low wages which they alone could earn in their own country, and the total want of parochial relief there, had at length become so excessive, that the people of England were thoroughly aroused on the subject, and they loudly demanded that a country which enjoyed a rental of £13,000,000 a-year, divided between the landlords and the bondholders, should no longer be permitted to save itself from the burden of maintaining its own poor, by sending them forth in starving multitudes to overwhelm the neighbouring island.

46.

History of

the mea

causes of its

So loud had these complaints become, that they had at length come to influence the legislature, and the committee which sat on the condition of the poor in 1828, sure, and had reported that the existing distress among the labour- long abeying poor of Great Britain was entirely owing to the ance. influx of Irish poor, and would at once be removed if it 1 Lords' Recould be stopped.' Such, however, was the vehemence of 7, 8 party strife, which soon after ensued from the dependence of the Catholic Relief and Reform Bills, that this all

port, 1828,

XXXVI.

1836.

CHAP. important subject was for a time forgotten, or viewed in an entirely fallacious light. The leaders of the Liberal parties insisted that Protestant ascendancy was the sole cause of the distress, and that Catholic emancipation, municipal reform, and the appropriation of church property, were the suitable remedies. The political economists vociferated that the evils were mainly owing to a redundant population; that the dangerous tendency to increase would only be rendered more formidable by the relief of the suffering with which it was attended, and that the only wise course was to let poverty find its own level, and improvidence in marriage be checked by its attendant and inevitable consequences. Strong as the Liberals and political economists were at this period in the House of Commons, they could not have so long withstood the loud demands of the English people for a participation by Ireland in the burden of maintaining the poor, had they not been powerfully aided by Mr O'Connell, Mr Sheil, and the whole Catholic leaders, who, either dreading a diminution in the revenue of the Catholic Church, from the burden of poor-rates in Ireland, or fearing that the people, if relieved, and suffering less, would become not so susceptible of agitation for the purposes of sacerdotal ambition, cordially united in resisting any legal provision for the Irish poor. Father O'Malley having brought forward a motion in the General Association for a petition to Parliament to establish a poor-law, it was thrown out by Mr O'Connell and Mr Sheil. "Dis1836, 307- cuss poor-law," said the latter, "at such a moment! ii. 312, 313. Away with such infatuation! The registry, the registry! -think of nothing but the registry." 1

Dec. 21, 1836.

1 Ann. Reg.

312; Mart.

"1

The ruinously low prices of 1835, however, and the unbounded pauperism which was in consequence produced, overcame all these obstacles, and though a majority both of the Cabinet and the House of Commons adhered to their old ideas on the subject, yet they were, in a manner,

constrained to yield so far as to issue a commission to CHAP. inquire into the condition of the poor in Ireland. For

XXXVI. 1836.

port, and its

lations.

1836.

tunately for the cause of humanity, and the ultimate 47. interests of property in Ireland, the gentleman at the Mr Nihead of it was eminently qualified by his knowledge and choll's Re abilities, as well as his ample experience of the English awful reve poor-laws under the new system, to discern rapidly the Aug. 21, real state of the facts. His commission bore date 22d August 1836, and before Parliament rose he had collected such a body of information as was entirely decisive of the question, and threw more light on the subject than all the previous debates in Parliament put together had done. He began his report with these words, the truth of which subsequent events have too fully verified: "Ireland is now suffering under a circle of evils producing and reproducing each other: want of capital produces want of employment; want of employment, turbulence and misery; turbulence and misery, insecurity; insecurity prevents the introduction and accumulation of capital, and so on. Until the circle is broken, the evils must continue, and probably augment. The first thing to be done, is to give security that will produce and invite capital, and capital will give employment. But security of person and property cannot coexist with general destitution; so that, in truth, the drainage, reclamation, and profitable cultivation of bogs and wastes, the establishment of fisheries and manufactures, improvements in agriculture, and in the general condition of the country, and, lastly, the elevation of the great mass of the people in the social scale, seem to be more or less contingent upon establishing a legal relief for the destitute."* He

"Capital has increased in Ireland, but population has increased still more; and therefore the great body of the people remain wretchedly poor notwithstanding the growth of public wealth. The extreme subdivision of land tends to the same result; the soil, fertile as it naturally is, becomes exhausted by incessant cropping. Except in the grazing districts, farms of a hundred acres are almost extinct. There being no legal provision for the destitute, and the subdivision of land into small holdings having destroyed the regular demand for VOL. VI.

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